 All right, I think we're going to move on to the first agenda item, which is School District Building Committee. So, come on up, and I believe you folks need the laptop, correct? Yes. Yeah, it turns it out. It's the best one. Oh, distract. It's heated. So, let's see if we can get this back. Oh, well, we've worked on that. I can give an introduction. My name is Claire Wool as we spoke in introductions. My name is Claire Wool. Claire, can you please do my way? Oh, sorry. Yeah. This one looks like a turning out of that. Thanks. Great. Thanks. My name is Claire Wool. I am on the school board, and chair of the school board, and here with Tom Peterson of Peterson Consulting. I'm also co-chair of the Facilities and Finance Committee. So, I had the pleasure of working with Keith Hillsbury, another school board commissioner on this committee to oversee the re-emissioning of VHS and VTC campus. As you know, in the fall, we passed unanimously by 70% the bond vote to support the renovation of VHS and VTC. And we wanted to share with you an update. You're the first NPA that we have come to. Last Thursday, we had a public meeting open to the public. That was publicized to answer any questions similar to this presentation. We did it for two hours in the VHS cafeteria and a great attendance. So, we are very appreciative of your invitation, and we are excited to share with you over the next 25 minutes. What we've done since January, since the bond passed to date. I first wanted to give some clarity to why Tom Peterson is here. The school district is set up, and the school board manages the district in a way, the superintendent, that when this bond was passed, it's a daunting task. Over the next three years, who will manage this project? And getting an education over the last six months, and working very closely with Mayor Murrow Weinberger and the city council last summer in order for it to get on the ballot. We developed an MOU, a memorandum of understanding with the city. And within that memorandum, it explained how important it was for the school district to follow certain guidelines and expectations that the city has for protecting its taxpayers. So, we take very seriously the fact that this $70 million project needs to be managed well and organized and on time and on budget. Without being said, part of the memorandum of understanding with the city and the taxpayers is that we hire an owner's project manager. So, it's called an OPM. An owner's project manager has the owner's interest within the project. So, we have a director of facilities, Marty Spalding, who manages our 11 schools, 11 program schools. Within that responsibility, there is no way that he could manage this VHS, BTC development over three years. So, an owner's project manager is hired to facilitate all that is necessary between the architect, the contract construction management company, and the contractors that work on the site over the next three years. So, with that process, with the AOE, we have strict guidelines and bidding guidelines. We put out to a scholar of RFP, and people applied to be this OPM. And we went through several interviews, and we were fortunate enough to hire Tom Peterson, who's here tonight, a local Burlington company, who's going to speak to a little bit about what he does. So, we'll talk more about what VA does with BTC development. But just to give you an education so that you can go out within board four and board seven to explain who is Tom Peterson, why is he speaking and not the superintendent or the school board. He will be representing this project with his team on behalf of us. And we work closely, and we've met every week, you know, I've met with the school board, excuse me, with the faculty and staff over the last, like I said, six months weekly, every Wednesday for three hours, and faculty. So, Tom was brought on the project, and we will now move forward with educating the public and using our BSE website for putting out information and updates. So, we have a homepage, a link within that website that if you ever want to click on it and say what's happening at BHS and BTC in this renovation, you'll be able to get that update. So, I want to introduce Tom, and my job was to explain that role, and I'll let him do the talking from here on out. Thank you. So, this presentation is going to be a quick, abbreviated course of what we presented last Thursday. And I want to remind everybody that those public meetings, just have to move that way a little bit to catch the camera. Thank you. Perfect. Our social camera shot. Those public meetings are going to be happening the third Thursday of every month. In a minute, I'm going to have to go back to my laptop to be able to advance that. So, this slide deck is going to be available on the project's website. So, if I buzz there really quickly, and there's things that you don't catch in this presentation, don't worry because you'll be able to view it at your leisure at home. So, let's see if we can skip the agenda part because this was the agenda for last Thursday. The Building Construction Oversight Committee is part of that MOU, and the members of that committee are here. Claire Wolke, Keith Pillsbury, Marcus Balding, Noel Green, Nathan Lavery, who's the Director of Finance for the district, Kate Stein, who's here tonight, a BHS parent and a superb substitute teacher. Eric Hochstra, who's a member of the community and a local developer. Peter Berenberg, who's the owner of The Bagel and an employer of many fine BHS students. Jordan Riddell, who's the Mayor's Chief of Staff and myself. That's your Building Oversight Committee. So, the purpose of that committee is to ensure that the project's carried out in a manner that's fiscally responsible, bringing it in on time and on budget. We're going to be providing regular updates to the school board itself and to the Board of Finance. Per the Memorandum of Understanding, the Owner's Project Manager will report to the Director of Property Services and be responsible for the management of all contracts on behalf of the Burlington School District and serve as the point person for the Oversight Committee. I think Claire went into some detail about what the OPM does so we can keep going here. That's okay. Yeah, we went through the selection process. Yeah, we're a local independent company. I founded the company in 2003. I operated it out of a basement office in my house on Grey Meadow Drive for years before I finally moved downtown and now I'm in the Maltec Building with a total of three employees. Variety tonight. Okay, I think we can keep going here. There's some sample projects. I've been involved with other school districts, Champlain College, a lot of projects up in the hospital and the Downtown Transit Center was one of our projects. Again, this is going to be, actually this will fill in if you keep hitting Enter there. This will be on the website as well. I'm going to send the slides back so if you need to contact me if you have any questions about our project, feel free to drop me a line. So what's been happening since the bond vote? That's what everybody wants to know. We voted to expend this money and make this nice goal, bring it into the 21st century. So since the bond vote, we've selected a security consultant that's part of one of the requirements of this project. They've selected the owner's project manager. We've conducted our first and second integrative design workshops and let me touch on that for just a second. This project, we're going to go for CHIPS certification. CHIPS is an acronym CHPS that stands for Collaborative for High-Performance Schools. It's very similar to LEED, I'm sure everybody's heard of LEED projects, but CHIPS is specifically targeted at schools and how schools operate and the purpose of schools as a learning environment. So we are planning to be the first CHIPS certified project in the state of Vermont. So part of that certification is to hire a security consultant. It requires us to have integrative design workshops where we bring all the design disciplines together with community members, security consultants to look at all angles of the project in terms of energy, appearance, longevity, overall cost effectiveness and total effectiveness of the building. We have selected our construction manager, that's Blighton Turner, who just finished up the Miller building on the main campus of the hospital. And partnered with Megan Jay, a local firm, who I've actually done a lot of work with. We've been conducting a lot of environmental testing. The 1963 building has a fair amount of issues that we're trying to uncover and get a handle on. We've done some preliminary permitting activity. It's actually part of the permitting activity is to visit the NPAs and give the neighbors and citizens an update on the project. We've done a lot of design surets with faculty and staff, and Claire has done an amazing job working probably hundreds of hours of corralling all these staff, staff folks, and coordinating these design surets hundreds of hours. The staff has been great. They've been really engaged in telling us what they want and need for this building, and that's been fed into the whole design process. Oh, I have that on there twice, don't I? Schematic design is complete, so that's a milestone in the project. Schematic design means that we now have drawings that we can get some pricing on. It's not the end result of the design. It's really the end of the beginning of the design, so that makes any sense. It's not the beginning of the end, it's the end of the beginning, and then we move on to design development. So that schematic design is now in the hands of lighting turner and their estimating staff, and we're looking at all the details that are available right now to come up with pricing. These are some shots of some of the design surets. So that was really a great process. I got to meet a lot of the staff, and they're just so engaged and so dedicated to the success of this project. It's been really rewarding. The disciplines involved in designing this project under the architects of Black River Design out of Montpelier, who've done a lot of schools in the state. And their sub-consultants are structural engineering, that's engineering ventures, civil engineering, Krebs and Lansing. MEP is Mechanical Electrical and Plumbing, and that's Ellen Consulting. Let's see, Landscaping is Wagner-Hodgson. The chip's consultant is James Carr, and acoustical engineering is Resource Systems Group. So a lot of those firms are local firms. It's an un-project for me because I've worked with a lot of those local firms before, so it's like getting a lot of friends and colleagues in the same room. We can really get a lot done. The school district also has its own consultants including me, the commissioning agent, which commissioning agents now are pretty common in projects. They look at the design, they're sort of like the second-essers of systems design in the buildings. And now they'll commission the building after it's built and make sure that the systems that were designed and installed are working properly. The environmental company that's working with us is ATC. RSG is doing traffic for us and security part of, oh, there's another acronym, SEPTED. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design. So they're working with us and the architects to help look at the whole building from a security point of view, security and crime prevention. So as I said, milestones that have been reached. Schematic design was completed last week. We're expecting our estimates to come back on August 19th. This whole process up to this point including, especially including the design surets have been really a wish list approach. What do we want this building to be? Let's dream big. Let's pull out all the stops and really dream big. The architect, the chief architect, likes to say, with $70 million, you have enough money to buy anything you want. But you don't have enough money to buy everything you want. So this is the dream big stage. We're going to look at the pricing when it comes back in August and then go back to the drawing board and see what kind of adjustments we need to make to make it fit the budget. The budget is the budget. $70 million is the cap. There's no going above that. And a big part of my job is to make sure you don't go above that. But, is that? Just that we bring it to the first finance. Yeah, there's several steps along the way. We bring, at certain milestones, what we bring is to the Board of Finance for review and approval. The other thing to keep in mind is that even after we have to go through some possibly painful cuts and reduce this dream, bring it down a few matches, this facility is still going to be so much better than it is now. It's going to be something that this whole city can be proud of. You don't really have time to go through all the updates on all the disciplines from the ground up. Again, this whole deck is available online. And if you have questions about it, you can contact me and we'll answer those questions. So, we have a lot of progress with structural. We have a lot of progress with civil and landscaping. Environmental stuff. We've got a lot of testing that has been done. We've got a lot of sampling and testing and we're awaiting some reports on the results of those tests. The traffic study was just completed last week. We've just got a chance to review it. And that's being circulated among the project team for analysis. A lot of people have asked about the traffic study and the impact of this project on traffic during construction. Is the intersection going to look like after construction? Is the project going to be able to improve that intersection at Institute Grove and North Avenue? Those are all great questions. But so far, this traffic study is really focused on trying to figure out what we've designed for the pickup and drop off and the new circulation of traffic. The fact is going to create any hassles or bottlenecks on the campus itself. We think that a lot of what we've discovered in the traffic study will give us information about, give us some hints about what we might be able to do to help improve the situation of that intersection, but that's still under review. The next meeting of the oversight committee that's a public meeting is going to be on August 15th. That's Thursday at 5.30. We try to keep them to an hour and a half or less. The front end of that meeting is really the project team updating the full committee and going through this list of what we've done in the last week or the last month. And then the latter part of the meeting is a chance for the public to ask questions and make comments about the project. So at this time, if you would like to ask us some questions, we'd be happy to entertain if we had to set the 30. And we also created some feedback forms so anyone can take and write, you know, a more in-depth question to us and we'll answer them and synthesize them once we have this and we can put them out in your minutes as well. Two questions. Yes. What is a charrette? And I don't see accessibility anywhere in there. Who's responsible for that? First question first, a charrette is where you sit around in a group and it can be a whole community or it can be a segment of a community about what that segment of the community needs. So for example, the science department, we had designed charrettes where we sat with all of the science staff and talked about their needs. How many labs do they need? What do they look like? What kind of equipment? Where should they be located? As far as accessibility, that's a huge, huge issue with the building as it is now. I probably should have mentioned it, but it goes along with this whole basket of needs of that building but probably one of the biggest challenges of that building is, as it is now, is that it's not accessible at all. So the new design will, no matter what kind of adjustments we have to make to the current design, final design will address accessibility to modern standards. I want to say one more thing about accessibility. We're not talking about just mobility. We're also thinking about accessibility in terms of language because there's so many languages spoken. So we're already thinking about signage, wayfinding around the campus. So that's part of the accessibility component. Two questions. One is, I'd be interested to hear how are you handling drilling for that? And how are you handling the tech center? And what are you hearing about design and all of that? Is that a separate issue? And the second one is that I've always thought that the ESL students who work in the building at the Building C is sort of a gulag. So when you're designing, it would be nice if we could design it in a way that our ESL and new American students are physically integrated into the actual school. Part of that's the administration, but part of its design. Right. You're right. The design and administration go hand in hand with making a building function to its highest level. I believe that it's, we're now calling it ELL, but ESL ELL is being brought in to closer to the main heart of the campus and right off the, it's in one of the new additions of Building A. BTC is included in this renovation and addition. So most of BTC is located in F building, although some of the other programs spill out into other parts of the building. It's all integrated. And all of F building is getting completely renovated. When we talk about faculty and staff, we work closely with BTC and VHS. So we had open houses and monthly meetings with the BTC and VHS staff. So great question. And the multi-legal liaison to me as I'm part of the academic board. Thank you very much. Yes. I may have missed it, but I think there's a lot of references in the community. It's wonderful. But I'm thinking how instructive it will be for students, representative students, to have a charrette or whatever. And they're equal because they're going to hit it again. The answer for that. Yeah. So we definitely met with students, the student body. We had student groups come and meet with us as well. Can we go somewhere closer? Yep. We have met with VHS and BTC students. We actually also, at the end of the year, the year end studies, the S program through VHS, we had a dedicated class program that met for two weeks talking about the re-envisioning of the high school, which was incredibly beneficial. So we had our architects and design and myself included to be a part of that yes program. So wonderful question. And without a doubt, we talk about it. And we've said the fifth graders right now will be the first class that, you know, because we, the sixth graders, the sixth graders coming up will be the first class that will start the school year in a new building. So we were looking at the ninth graders and tenth-grader input because we were, you know, the irony is when we talk to them about having, you know, they never use a locker because the lockers are different. And the building is incredibly cold and leaks. And they said, we don't need lockers. They were so used to not having lockers that we're like, no, we don't want that feedback. We think you might need lockers down the road. So funny what they were used to. You're right. That's exactly the word. We agree. We agree. That's great feedback. We would not be, we've talked about that. Without student input, this is, you know... Any more questions or are we going to talk to the one back there? All right. Thanks. I'm sorry. I'm late. First of all, Tom, congratulations. I know Tom's work. And I know the school is in really good hands with you managing the project. Thanks. I'll give you your 20 bucks. Yeah, right? I didn't know you were going to be here. But anyway, I'm late. So did you address issues about security already? Yes. Or could you, if you haven't? Yeah. With the security, just to go over that quickly, is that crime prevention through environmental design, it's a very specific program of processes, procedures to get to a design that works for the facility and for how it's being operated. It's also tied in to CHIPS, which is a collaborative for high-performance schools. They really go hand-in-hand. We can't really do CHIPS without Zepthed, without those crime prevention beats. We hired Margie Olson-Healy, who's a well-known Burlington base and also is now outside of Burlington, a company that has done our security plan in 2013 in review. I mean, we've failed all of our security plans based on access in the 62 doors to get into the high school. So for us, Margie Olson-Healy is one of the best in the business for my personal review, and we were happy to have them work with that and work with Black River design. So, that was important. All right. A couple other questions. Sorry, we've got to move on to the next segment here. Have a feedback form, though. Anyone who wants them. One more opportunity for you to plug where everyone can find this material. Do you have the URL? I don't. I don't. Thank you very much, everyone. And I believe you folks had a sign-up sheet that you want people to sign in on as well. Yes, we do have a sign-up sheet. So, in fact, it's circulating on a clipboard, and please put your name on that. That really helps us out. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you. Okay. Next up, we have the Northap Co-op new community opportunity. So, while we're doing that. We're going to push together as much as possible so that we can get you all on screen. The Northap Co-op had someone here a minute ago, Stephen Hamlin. So, if he's here. Do you want to come join us up here? No. Okay. Sure. I'm Karina Driscoll, and thanks for making room for us on the agenda tonight. I know that we got on the agenda very short notice. We've only been discussing a new concept for a couple of weeks, and we're here to discuss an opportunity for the community. The Northap Co-op, formerly known as Harrington Mobile Home Park, before they went Co-op, plans to put their house at 1106 North Avenue. You're looking at a basketball game and not a picture of the house, but you will have a picture of the house in a moment. They planned to put the house in the market. It's vacant. It's a cross from Key Bank on North Avenue. And New City Councilor Franklin Paulino asked for my help about how we can ensure this house can become a community asset. He was talking to the Co-op, and he called me up and said, I know this is something we can do. Would you help me on it? I'd love to work with you on this. So, we've been allowed to use for purposes that best serve our community. And we're working with the Northap Co-op to do that. We're looking at how to identify sources to restore the house, and we're also looking for occupants of the property and provide value to the community through what they offer. And who will be able to occupy the building and pay the rent that's necessary to legitimize the initial investment because it's going to cost money, and we're not looking for taxpayer money, but we're open to fill in profit gifts that would help us achieve the goal. We're not taking off a fundraising campaign tonight or anything like that, but if you are an individual organization that you know of and I'd be interested in supporting this project, I'd love to hear from you. So, tonight I'd just like to take a few minutes to introduce the people who are involved today. Outline what's been discussed and who's been so far. And discuss some ideas that are shown with some real promise. And hear from the Northap Co-op if they want to add anything. And get community input on this project and answer questions if we can. And finally, I encourage people who want to jump right in and get involved. So, there's a small organizing group or informal. We formed without any sort of organization. We were just helping each other out trying to explore what's possible and working closely with the Co-op. So the conversation was, as I said, initiated by Franklin Poligno. And Ollie Day is in the back and he's joined our effort as well. And Carmen George, who can't be here but is helping and Travis Bragg is right here. Been working on the floor plan and the deck you see behind you. Which is a word I don't know, but Travis does when we're in here. And co-working space connections and et cetera. Also, we're working with closely with Steve Hamlin over at the Northap Co-op. He's the president of the board. And he's been working with us and making sure that we are all on the same page and we want to be doing what we're doing. Jay LeClair, who I don't think is here, has been co-op since he was 12 years old. He might say hello to him. And so first, and I'm talking fast because I know that you only have a little bit of time. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. You're right. So just to outline what we've been so far. And then I'm going to go ahead and jump in who wants to. First, we've been with the Co-op board and we consider holding off on putting a house on the market until we have an opportunity as a community to say what do we want to do with this and how can we work together and make something great happen. The board agreed to that and they have agreed to put the listing of the house off until at least August 1st. Also why I'm talking fast. Because we have a very short timeline but we're excited about what's possible. So after that meeting which was just a couple weeks ago we organized a community meeting and it was organically formed it was just word of mouth and about 30 people showed up at the bagel thanks to Peter hosting us there on a beautiful night last week in July. And so I thought that's a good sign that people want to be involved. So in addition to about 25 community members we also have representatives from the mayor's office the Sledge of Free Libraries and friends of the Sledge of Free Libraries the Brown to Police Department and Parks and Recreation Department. And it was a really great turnout and I think we all had this amazing meeting where we brainstormed all the wonderful things we might also like to have in the new year's end that we don't have already. And we really focused what we'd like to see with a lot of it that can happen in this 1600 square foot house but a lot of it probably can't happen and there's a place for that conversation to continue forward no matter what. So then we also held an open house and it wasn't as well attended as the meeting but some people did come through the house and express some interest in being involved. And so with that before I go into discussing what is evolving in the conversation as I've laid it out so far frankly do you want to add anything to that? I'll just say I think it's been great to get a lot of input about what people would like to see in the new year's end and it's been nice to hear the different ideas so I think Karina I'm sure we'll talk about what those ideas are but just trying to figure out as we move forward as a community like what can we see what can work what can we as community members go out there and find places that might not think of the new north end as the place to start their business so that part of the process has been very enjoyable as long as working together for everybody city, department people, neighbors I haven't met so it's been great and you know just while we have this light up behind us I think I'll just say this is a really unique opportunity this is a house that's probably about 1600 square feet it's a beautiful old house right on north avenue there aren't many old houses in the new north end we love our mid-century modern homes and all of it but we also have this unique historic house that was the Farrington house that had the Farrington floor shop and they had this beautiful house and they created opportunities for people to have affordable housing for the creation of the local home park and it's been vacant for some time and the members of the North Ave co-op are doing this amazing thing on North Ave which is buying their land and becoming a co-op and then creating their own vision for what that community will be and so the conversations have been awesome with Steve and other members of the board and members of the community about what could be possible and so Travis is scrolling through the first floor pictures right now there's tall windows and it's like really good bones for a house it just feels good to be there there's mature trees you don't really feel like you're on North Avenue but we could put some good signage and get some good frontage there so there's real opportunity for visibility so this is the first floor and then we get onto the second floor and it also has high ceilings the house, as I said is structurally really beautiful it needs some work there isn't heat on the second floor beyond the left faceboards the slate roof still looks in pretty good shape but it needs that sort of attention to kind of make sure it's going to carry forward for decades it has porches it has three entrances it's really pretty lovely and so it does feel like we've got a chance we'll try to make something happen political and just make this a community effort I think that we can all win and create something and we're not sure how it's going to come together but there are a lot of people interested in being involved so some of the things that are showing real promise include so and I'm going to actually I had to go through the brainstorm list so you can hear about some of those things people had already contributed so it's a very long list but no no you're fine so when we met with the 30 people in the bagel there were a lot of different things we talked about that people just shot out hey what would you like to have in the new north end I don't know why I'm kidding the whole thing but a community hub there was a desire for a satellite library the idea of having a kid section and programming and art programming and storytelling and our own random library of things so it's a lovely show and there was talk of shared office space the idea of being able to work outside of your home would be really lovely in a space where you're working with other people who work outside of their home just get out of the house and work in a nice summer building across from Peter's Bagel Shop where you can get a coffee all day long an incubator kitchen another subject that's come up that Ollie feels really strongly about they have a bill there in the new north end and registered to vote ask a question and they pertinent offer what if we had truly and if we can't do any of this what if we built truly affordable housing they get community center available can we offer really low rent housing where we don't currently have that offer we could feed kids there we could have bike racks we could have a csa pickup first studios cooking lessons classes to learn English a health clinic a childcare center affordable accessible community spaces small and homey for book clubs AA meeting, teen groups, mom groups bridal showers, etc worship small public meeting space, yoga studio meditation center tutoring and music lessons espresso the list goes on and on we have that in there we have a lot of great assets already in the new north end including this building we're sitting in and we also have bloody and I think what we're hoping to do tonight is continue to progress on this issue but also make sure people sign up to continue to have that conversation about how we can build our community in lots of different ways so taking up too much time on visioning and let's talk a little bit about what has evolved so growing with wider possible tenets of the building that came to the open house they're opening a preschool and I'm going to let you tell them about themselves I'm going to start a video and you guys if you want to come up here you can get that this is a short video about who they are hopefully we have volume so okay okay there because we are short on time but I don't know if I think I have a line here do you guys want to say anything before you frame this use I will say they are very interested in looking for a space in the new north end child care center was on the list obviously there's been no commitments made but they're actively looking and a lot of us think it's a great fit and we wanted to put that out there it would be one of several things potentially going on in that building do you want to add anything Hi I'm Don I'm Holly we just want to say hi and that we're really excited about the possibility of being out in the new north end and having access or creating access to high quality early childhood education extremely limited so we're just really really excited about the potential to work with you we have cards and stuff people have any questions okay and my daughter was that's why she thought she might have so in addition we talked about the co-working space really getting traction there are four offices upstairs the potential for space downstairs access to internet and spaces to work do you want to say anything about that Franklin? Hi I am a solo professional and I've been working co-working spaces for a number of years in Burlington and I guess like you could say I understand what is necessary in a space like this I worked at study hall downtown at college and traction but all I really have to say at this stage is that we looked at the floor plan and we saw a lot of potential for 15 to 20 maybe even 30 seats what's cool about co-working is whether you're a remote worker or self employed like myself you can just grab a seat anywhere and you have a fantastic community to interact with on a daily basis just as though they were your own co-workers I know I personally have hired my study hall co-workers in the past and I have been hired and it's a really fantastic way for professionals to collaborate so anyway this seems like a fantastic opportunity to take advantage of the upper floor of the house knock down really just two walls and otherwise expand expand and refurbish what is there and turn it into a great place for professionals to thrive and grow our companies great and I will just add as we have one minute left that also very high in the list it seems is the library concept as well as the city services concept and really at this point champion housing trust has agreed to come look at the property and take a look at what costs would be and to possibly advise us and we have to put something together and it's not going to happen decided it's going to happen because a bunch of us come together and we find the right tenants and we figure out how to put something like this together so what I will invite you to do is sign up on our sheet I wanted to answer questions but I think we're out of time maybe Keena can pass the clipboard around and if it comes by you but you just want to get email updates I won't sell you your e-mess or save it for political reasons I will simply communicate with you but you know when there are do we have time for a couple questions we do not we have one in the back I will stick around and answer questions my question is the people who are living there now how much input have they had and are they going to have in what this is going to be I live across the street I know a bunch of people there and I'm really concerned that they meet their needs as are we with the Northab co-op board it's their property, it's theirs to sell or not sell and I think we'll continue to do that we've been talking for about two weeks and putting the communication and inviting people to be part of the conversation beyond the board is certainly very imminent and happening to some extent great, thanks alright thank you next up we have police department community engagement update I'm hoping you don't have a lot of doubts okay good I'm going to pass you a better mic so hello everyone I was here at an NPA I think two meetings ago I'm here at the Deputy Chief of Operations at the Burlington Police Department and I am a resident of the New North End over on Appletree Point Road and I'm happy to be here I'm here primarily to sort of hear any complaints or issues or thoughts that you all have we just had a very productive meeting before this one specific to conditions and issues like parking park as well as some other parks in the New North End but I am happy to sort of hear feedback and to take any questions that people have about what policing is doing or how the department is working in the city right now my question is we bank with St. Paul Street in Burlington and today have had to reduce their ATM hours because of security issues it's not safe for their staff or their clients and I we have emailed the mayor Delhozo, our city council members and haven't heard back anything about what's going to be done to correct that so that we can bank at our ATM when we choose to and not reduce hours and it's just rather concerning that this is happening in Burlington and in talking to the bank they said it's happening to several of the businesses on St. Paul Street and also Church Street that they are having to reduce their hours because of safety issues so sometimes that has to do with the frankly when officers respond to something like that they really have to have a real authority to have somebody move the reason that they are closing is because people have either gone into say a vestibule location or an indoor guarded ATM location officers have to have there has to be a post of trespass notice which some of them have and there also has to be a person who is willing to either swear out or issue a complaint to that individual the officer can do it on the person's behalf including that from the banks overnight or at different powers but that's something that we can work on and will work on I have had several meetings with the new chair of the Marketplace Commission Amanda Jepnick and also with John Redmond who is the director of the Marketplace we are in the midst of trying to determine what we are going to do about certain kinds of behavior that do in fact cause repercussions in people's quality of life but nevertheless are not fully unlawful now what you are describing is trespass when somebody takes up overnight residence or temporary residence in a vestibule or does for example either goes there for shelter or sometimes for bodily reasons and sometimes for other kinds of sometimes for narcotics usage etc those are unlawful accident of themselves and those can be addressed by officers if the person is just inside the area it's a trespass issue and we need to work with the banks to make sure that we are getting their permission in order to address it as when it occurs it's really disturbing that one I can't go to the bank but I want to thank you but we are trying to bring businesses into Burlington that's not how you do it and nothing is getting done we couldn't get an answer from anybody and that's really disturbing that I pay a lot of taxes in the city and I expect an answer from my city councilor and the mayor and the police chief nobody responded and that's disturbing so I will give you my email address and you're welcome to send that email to me I will give you a response via email on that issue on the bigger issue of not just the best deals of ATMs but rather the stream as a whole we are we're trying to determine how to come up with rules that are that are lawfully enforceable and that are also cognizant of individuals' rights but are I agree and using and being able to go and use a vestibule is one of those things I'm talking about other kinds of presence on safe for example church streets and things that the marketplace is struggling with and what you're describing is one facet of that and one symptom of it it has been I think you'll see the degree to which the closure of city health are effective at least in that corridor that you're specifically referring to but the people who were in city health are still in our city and they still have every right to be in our city as long as their behavior doesn't cause the public spaces that they use to be unusable by others we have a Facebook question it says ask the officer to address the issue of cars being welcome to so we have had a state of car breakings we were able to actually I had an officer do some really terrific investigatory work to tie together a couple of those that involved open cars people who left their cars open and had left things in those cars and I am not victim blaming when a crime occurs is the criminal who caused that crime but in this instance these cars were left open and items were in them in ways that could be visible but officers were less able to do a lot of really good investigatory work and link together some identity theft and misuse of credit cards in different locations tie them to specific theft and end up with two individuals who were arrested and put behind bars both of those individuals we did a press release on it and the press release was quite long and this is out the sort of complexity of that case and the work that the officer did if you google the name of one of the universities it's not a common name Brear and Burlington just put those two things in a google search it will go back a lot farther than the one press release that I did what that indicates is that we have people who commit certain kinds of crimes again and again we are as a community at a loss of how to deal with that exactly those frustrate me greatly they frustrate us as neighbors they seem to be small petty crimes on an individual basis but they are not small and petty to someone who suffers from them they're not small and petty to someone who has to hold banks and deal with identity theft issues and repercussions of that and even if there's no financial loss ultimately because the banks and credit cards absorb it although let's be frank it's somewhere down the line we're absorbing that too we're not small crimes and yet nobody should go to prison for those even for years and years of committing them that's not going to be the answer what is the answer I'm not certain because deferment and continual offers of alternatives and different forms of justice clearly aren't taking not for the individual who's in that press release but that is one set Mike Henry one of my officers did a terrific job in the case together and it's exhilarating and it's great police work but it's frustrating too because he knows very well that they are going to be out soon rather than later we've had some other incidents that are break-ins for the person writing in online that have been done I don't think it's probably the same individuals because the MO is a little different these are involved actually breaking cars and then last we are looking into them we've taken prints off these and we encourage neighbors to do not in a sense of saying this is a victim's fault but to do things that they can to just be prophylactic about these acts and say do not leave your cars unsecured it doesn't apply to the ones in the class who are broken and do not leave things in plain view that are conceivably valuable and that goes even for something as simple and I'm guilty of this if you look in my car right now you'll see a car is not connected to anything else but that's something something is in there yes I have a somewhat sensitive question to ask and I'm going to try to be as sensitive as possible about it we recently had a tax increase that was presented as wanting to increase the salaries for BPD which I'm totally for I'm not against at all but it was billed as we need to do this because police officers are leaving because they're not getting paid enough but my understanding from people who will not speak out publicly is that it's actually the policies that City Hall has been implementing and the way that police are being treated and how their hands are being tied and all of the other things that are happening out of fear that are making it impossible to police productively and people are feeling very beat up and not able to do their jobs and that's why they're leaving so what I've been told is that that is actually why police officers are leaving not because they're not getting paid enough and I hear very concerning proposals coming out of City Hall and other things that make me feel less safe here in Burlington with my hands and feet and I'm hoping that you would be willing to speak to some of that what is getting in the way of policing in Burlington Sure So as a taxpayer in the City and speaking to fellow taxpayers in the City I thank you for passing that bill I'm very happy that my officers got more your officers and I'm very happy that they got that salary increase in the latest contract negotiations I'd love to see them get more frankly I think they deserve more but I think there are a lot of public positions that deserve more but from here carrying the water of men and women with whom I work all of whom I think are really touristic officers and are dedicated to keeping people safe and to prevent human harm in this order so I'm glad that they got that increase the salary does make a difference in our ability to position ourselves as an agency respective to other agencies in the region as a place to come and to work and to retain people the entire police profession is facing a retention and recruitment issue it is been pronounced frankly since 2014 when issues with police violence and use of force broke through the floor and there were questions of police the gap between police and some of the communities that they serve and that has caused a tremendous amount of stress on the profession and it has in fact made it more difficult to recruit and to retain in so far as Burlington specifically I do not believe that a single officer in my tenure and I've admittedly been here since October but I've looked at records that precede me a bit left owing to salary we've had officers leave owing to I had one terrific officer whose wife is a physician and she got a cake in Philadelphia so often goes to be I've had one who had a girlfriend who moved to New Hampshire and he went to New Hampshire I have had officers who have retired owing to the opportunity to get a Burlington convention and get another job, a state job but I have not yet had anybody tell me that's not true I had one individual who did in fact stay in the city and went to UDM owing to salary and a bonus to UDM girls our officers come to Burlington paid as a part of it and I want them to get paid because of the work they do and the challenges that they face and the performance that they give all of us but they come to Burlington too because Burlington is different than any other place in this state it's different than I mean you know Manuski is a little bit similar as far as what it faces but it's very, very small and South Burlington Burlington is unique the volume of job that they engage in is vastly different than any other department in the state they are incredibly well trained and they encounter an incredible array of big city issues I came from New York City and NYPD and Burlington sees the same kinds of issues less frequency for 44,000 rather than 8.5 million but it is the same kind of stuff and I think most of the men and women in the department on some level are here because of that because of the sense that they get a being part of an agency that is incredibly well trained is doing great work and gets to face a lot of different kinds of challenges I want to make certain that they're compensated adequately for that and right now we actually have a terrific salary these are the others in the region that others will change their salaries but that's just sort of the balance that we have but I don't I would push back on the notion that we're losing people owing to rules that come certainly not from all or rules that they feel are changing in these are policy issues, these are issues with American jurisprudence and it's changing in ways that do frankly make law enforcement tougher there are certain tools that have been removed from officers and those have been removed because in some instances officers overused them or in some instances I believe rare ones but nevertheless important ones have used them I don't think that is true of officers here I do not believe that is true of the men and women of the BPD but those strictures are real and they do make their job more challenging but the rule book is the rule book it's based on the constitution ultimately and that's the rule book we got John can you provide an update on your meeting regarding Letty Park and address that I have a co-worker my office boarder is Letty Park and she does not feel safe in her own morning in the office alone it's a concern that is a concern I don't want anybody to feel safe in the city I jog most mornings past Letty in the six o'clock shower I don't personally see that kind of disorder there but I know that it exists and I heard an earful from the folks who attended earlier and I know that we have activity there at night it is frankly unlawful if it's even in the park or if it's down on the beach and I'm going to start addressing that I have a just even from this meeting alone I have several plans to figure out what we can do in order to take a look at whether or not people are using the park at night beyond just for example people who are sleeping in cars there which is an issue but we're talking about more things that are more quality of life disorder issues lack of safety I appreciate the sensibility of that and I get people feel that way I don't think that they need to but I don't want to be dismissive of whether or not people feel safe in those places I don't think that the you know we have some people that are camping they're not allowed to it's unlawful to camp outside of designated campgrounds in the city in city parks we are going to look into that and address it I know that we had one situation that I thought had been addressed that it hasn't been fully over in even Allen but even those individuals they can be frightening and they can certainly be I understand the sense of who is that happening I don't believe that we had certainly no indications for those people to be feared in any way but we want to make certain that they're taken care of too in ways that are healthy for them and healthy for them I told the group in the other office that yesterday I spent a full hour and a half talking with a woman who was tent next to 311 North Avenue the older building next to the the new apartment complex that's going up because that area is considered ecologically sensitive and we're attempting to move her out and we've been doing so piecemeal in ways that are as lawful as we're obligated to make them in to give her a fair notice I sat there for an hour and a half talking with her just trying to get her to come out and was unable to at that time to remove that camp this morning in a way that's safer for her and didn't involve us taking her out of that camp the issues of North Letty Park are things that I'm aware of in that meeting we're going to be doing some unfortunate activity on parked cars and people using the camp at night when they're not supposed to be and we're going to be looking into whether or not there are camps that is campers in the vicinity of the ball fields and certainly the one over there I think we have time for one more question so I'm going to talk about what Erika was talking about people leading the police force this could be real uncomfortable to some people but I come from a family of a brother who was a police officer and was disabled he was disabled for about 32 years he was in Los Angeles and one of his biggest complaints and I hear this all the time is that police officers do not stand behind the police officers and we can help by writing letters I know that Sarah George just dropped three cases that made me crazy that they were dropped I see no reason for that I think we should talk about things like that that might be a reason Erika and I agree on something but it's possible public safety exactly would you chime in on that it wasn't a question so I'm going to dodge it by saying it wasn't a question we have time for Keegan I see Keegan stand up for lunch first I really want to say thank you for all that work that you folks are doing I know that it's not a good job and that you're dealing with a lot of multiplicity of issues including addiction and homelessness and all of that but I wondered if you could talk to us a little bit about with the closure of the downtown park we've been seeing a lot of homeless folks sort of migrating around the city and what we can do I know that the police has a policy on this if we can talk about it and let us know what the process is if they're not posing a danger do we call you folks how do we get these folks services because I don't want to inundate the police department do we call is that that may not be necessary thank you for that and for the sentiment behind it this reconstruction has taken a a court group of folks who are there on a regular basis and not left them with that opportunity many of them currently are sort of located under the tree on the south wall of city hall immediately there but they're also moving to other locations there is something that they call the beer tree which is basically the south stoop of the congregational church between the Methodist church and the congregational and the old Catholic church and its grounds there although those are being sort of fenced off and boarded up increasingly with regard to you know if you see unlawful behavior you see people who are drinking alcohol in public who are certainly harassing individuals and or who are fighting and all of these were things that would happen in city hall park with not all the time by any means there are many days where all the people in there sit and don't really cause this kind of problems they smoke and sometimes you know officers are there to tell them they can't or they're not and sometimes they surreptitiously drink but they don't always bring with it additional disorder when they do yeah we want those calls we want to know and our you know agency is going to respond in order to try to stop that behavior that's the goal the goal is stopping the behavior so that we can have an environment that everybody can enjoy partaking and when people commit behavior that prevents everyone from enjoying equally freely that's why we have laws that act as proxies for our expectations of what you know equal access to our public spaces is we will take action on those kinds of things people can call us people can also talk to folks I mean these people are our neighbors too I don't mean to say these people because sometimes even that phrase is loaded and I don't mean it that way I mean the people who are some of them are truly undomissiled and are living rough as they say intense and things some of them have places to go at night and they have houses and homes and relatives they keep them in but they're burlingtonians and as long as they're in these spaces they are lawfully allowed to be in these spaces and to use them and to enjoy them and to the extent that we don't if their behavior isn't tending towards the unlawful that's on us and I think that in some instances we've ceded some of these spaces to them because we find it distasteful or because we just don't want to be near it and that is not necessarily a law enforcement prerogative to address it is however a law enforcement prerogative to address the behavior when it tilts and I recognize too that the behavior tilts often enough that people will say I don't want to draw this line in my head about whether or not the behavior has tilted or hasn't I know that individuals like this tend to go in that direction more often than not and just go for it and that's not invalid so the more we use our public spaces honestly the more we continue to hold them as a community but I do want calls and the department does want calls when it sees behavior like that and we have an array of services that we will offer that long conversation I had with that woman yesterday and that was me personally doing that because I wanted to make certain that we moved that ten in a way that was lawful and also safe is an example of that and the things that we were offering to her and the ways in which we took those possessions and logged it in and I'm certain that she will be able to get them back if she wishes I'm not entirely certain what her state is to know who we've done it in these ways but we take that very seriously we take people who are a danger to themselves or others very seriously but the thresholds for danger to self or others are strict standards and they're standards that don't mutter to yourself when you're walking up and down church street wearing clothes that haven't been not a danger to yourself or others but I get that it can I get that it can diminish quality of life and it's something that affects us and we have to as a group, as a community talk about what we're going to do about that for the health of the community alright thank you so we're at the end of our time here alright so I left that going a little bit longer so we only have a few minutes for this next section so all I want to say is it was a good conversation about the so the city council has decided to give the MPAs some extra funding this year so what does extra funding mean well it means that previously we had about $400 for the whole year which bought snacks and batteries for the microphones and that was about it so when we wanted something like the camera that we're using to record for facebook that actually had to go under a separate budget request that I think took about a year to get refunded now we actually have like a real budget to work with and it's awesome and thank you to the city council for doing that I believe we have $3200 per award it's $25 sorry $25 sorry I was looking into an old email I guess alright $25 any case which means we have $5000 all together that's a significant amount of money and as part of the steering committee we don't want to be the only ones making that decision it's the MPAs money which means that everyone who shows up is money so I'd like to put together a little kind of group of people who are interested in figuring out what we want to do with that there's been a lot of ideas like well getting microphones that work consistently or audio visual equipment that we don't have to cast a spell around every time we want it to work there's also lots of interesting projects like community center like bigger projects that we could actually put money into so there's a ton of ideas for what to do with this money I'd really like to get together a group of people to talk more about it I'm going to open an email list at this meeting but it's July and a lot of people who might be interested aren't here so I'm going to kind of make this announcement at the next couple of MPAs as well we'll try to get a good list of people talks to people who might be interested and so I'm going to sign up sheet all the way in the back just name an email address it has green sharpie at the top of it so please sign up and I'll send you an email and organize a little meeting it'll be good thanks and next up we have engagement with elected officials so we're going to ask elected officials to come up to the front take a seat and we'll give everyone two minutes to give kind of a quick opening thing and then we'll open it up for questions and ideally you keep your questions pretty short like around 30 seconds and we'll give folks about two minutes to respond so it's obviously summertime we have one meeting July one meeting and the other so it's a little bit and the agenda item last meeting was all these items so I won't step on his toes I think it's really exciting director of equity and diversity at the city council level and I put in a lot of work and so I'll let him talk about that I obviously have a couple side projects I don't know if everybody knows but I would draw attention to that it's serve week this week and you know they're trying to raise money on dollars or the shelter that allows people who are homeless to go when they are intoxicated and it's the only shelter and so they're trying to raise $10,000 for a low barrier shelter on K Street and as part of that we're going to Salvation Army tomorrow and helping engaging with their event which I've done in the past and I wouldn't encourage anybody to call them up actually the person who runs the kitchen lives out there so constituent here and she's great so you can call her anytime so volunteer with me I'd like to know that I'm working on a resolution for talking about climate change and the effect of tree plantings climate change and the city's already actively engaged in the tree planting program for the similar dashboard but as a result of the animal dashboard now being seven counties and I think we have about 11% ash trees in Burlington I started working on a resolution that would both draw attention to the great work they're doing but provide more support so that's what I'm looking at I'm Kendra Sowers your school board commissioner and we also have had some of our self committees not been meeting but we I have a few updates for you specifically at Hunt we are finally paving at Hunt and we are put the money into the bathrooms which is very needed over at our middle school we finished our superintendent evaluation which we take really seriously and we worked at Vermont school board association and helped us and we delivered that to him so that that was a big task and we just delivered that last month to him we did make our magnet coaches full time they were part time and we were from people all over the city that they wanted them to be full time so they're back to being full time coaches for IAA and the sustainability academy and we hired a new human resources director in the central office so Susan Anderson Brown was hired she goes by V and she comes with a vast amount of experience so we're pretty hopeful and excited that she is there I think she'll be a really good addition we had a board retreat about a month ago a couple weeks ago I guess and we did board self-evaluation and we also came up with some strategic goals and what we're going to do is take the strategic goals that we came up with and we're going to meet with the school principals which has never been done before we're going to meet with all of them because we want it to be in alignment with what's happening at every school so we're really excited for that meeting and that is happening on August 13th so it's going to be right back and I think that's it I'm Jean O'Sullivan I'm the state representative of district 6-2 and first and foremost I want to say off our city councilors and our school board members are not off the level of work they do is the hardest thing I ever did was represent this district from the city council so I just want to do hands off to our school board members and our city council members because it's really tough so when we're off what are we doing I talked to you a lot about workforce development developing a pipeline we know with our under employment now it really is clear there are thousands of jobs skilled jobs that are going unfilled by remoders they don't have the skills so what we did last year and what we're doing currently in the summer is we are the state college system primarily CCB and Vermont tech our poise to take over and run the adult career technical education throughout the state so right now we're working with a consultant who is going to come in with a to-do list of how to get this done not whether we should or shouldn't we're going to do that here's a concrete example of what that means we have a hospitality industry that needs people we've got no training there is no post secondary training in culinary arts anywhere in the state and the reason for that is it's bloody expensive to build those facilities however Burlington Tech our many other of our high school tech programs have brilliant culinary programs that we can use at night the nighttime directors are the daytime directors and if they sign on and we get this done it'll be brilliant we're on the sidelines, I'm part of the climate process and we're part of the sub-pedion economic development and in that guide I sat with Vermont Gas who knew that Vermont Gas has a 5% mix of renewable natural gas which is basically a divester that does farm waste and food scraps and we are going to be working with them they want to decarbonize they are looking at trying to build their mix up to 40 to 45% renewable natural gas and I'm reaching out to the ag community and this summer we're going to be coming up and looking at the business model of putting in digesters there are digesters now for electricity these could be for natural gas which will which will subsequently change what we're doing in the state and we're actually creating a whole new source of energy so here we go bottom floor along with Carol the senate account because it's so cold in here I'm going to talk very little two things that I'd like you to do if you would for me I am talking to people about these little things that are appearing on top of our telephone poles I think instead of a roll out of 5G that not a lot of people are noticing if you see a lot of electrical stuff on poles in your neighborhood and you look up the very top you'll see something that looks like a big can and I've talked to BED about where they're going and why they're going and I haven't gotten any successful response from them so if you see something happening in your neighborhood let me know I think it's something you should be aware of secondly if you sort of touched on getting people here to work and play it's pretty significant that's why I sit on the board that manages the retirement funds in the last month the second reading agency has downgraded for a month's credit rating not because of the debt or anything like that primarily it's because we're old and we need more young people who are in our economy I'm not going to suggest a solution to that but it's a thing that we need to be aware of Carol Hoody and I represent Ronald Bob District 6-1 and Bob without a time so we couldn't tell you the rest of the information about what we're doing to address the aging population in Vermont one thing we're doing is expanding broadband in rural Vermont we have access here in Burlington to Burlington Telecom Comcast, etc and in fact when I knock on door I hear that the strength of people deciding to come to Burlington and be able to work remotely from Burlington is that Burlington Telecom has a very good strength and speed so that's why some young people are able to be here so we passed H513 which is a house bill to expand broadband in rural communities so they can attract workers and remote workers and we allocated 1.3 million new money in the budget to support this broadband expansion the plan is to drive even more young folks to Vermont child care, another issue for young I know from knocking on your doors that you want to be able to afford child care and grandparents want their children and grandchildren to be able to live and work here if they so choose so this year's state budget is at 7.4 million dollars additionally to help with child care costs and again to draw young people here and to keep them here and clean environment to grow our economy through tourism and outdoor recreation and to continue to draw young people and families here for quality of life as 96 the clean water funding bill you've heard about that a couple of times already it's our plan for long term funding of Lake Champlain Basin and Cleanup Lake Champlain Basin Cleanup it just received approval from the EPA the Environmental Protection Agency that that is an okay plan and so with those items we're trying to attract and retain young people and change the demographic it was the only reason that Ludi downgraded us from the very highest fund rating you can have in the whole country to just a titch off and so that's what we're doing because we're already doing a responsible balance budgeting, paying down, pension debt and so forth thank you so I have three minutes to focus a little bit I'm going to take the 30 seconds so thank you and John thank you so much he did a very good presentation I think he speaks very well he engages people that's great so people who live in Rosario and Loves one of them is right here we are very sorry about what happened to you and as you all know it was expected that these might get more people to get back out of our water issues and infrastructure guys working out in the hot day and seeing this sewage coming from your bathroom it was great it was not great but what I mean the way that the city of Berlin was responsible effective the director of the division came all the way here and jumped on every single process I think that's exactly what we need to continue it's also important to note that many things are happening reason why I cut my work hours to 30 instead of 40 because like you said it requires a lot of work but it also requires us to please help us to meet but to not always just point a finger you know let's work together that's what it should take talking working together we passed at the council it was a resolution it was unanimous and I learned that the work happened behind the scenes it's not on TV it's not on the meeting it's big behind my next initiative will be around homelessness it's a big problem here and I think with the money selling Burlington Telecom we can allocate at least something to think about the creation of the village for homelessness tiny home village it happened in many other cities and how do we take this some of them and take people to like our neighbors how do we make it that there are so many of it that I want to talk about and some of them are specific to here the new north place it's a special place we need to be proud of that the reason why now we have five of the city departments who reside here Ray is here Cindy is here Jeremy is here Mr. White is here so many people are here because we live in the greatest place in the whole city let's work together collaboratively and why not even close and have our own city because our place and town now I'm telling you it's all true but you know there are a couple other things about city hall part that I want to talk about about the park project and so many for questions you've been waiting a long time thank you all of you for your service I especially want to thank Ali for your leadership at the city council recently on policing issues which is a classical burning to change the world at UVM and I work with kids here at Harnes and at Flint and many of these kids are children of color and I was personally deeply disturbed and distraught when I saw the videos of what happened on Church Street if you haven't watched them you should and think about what it would be like to have a child with brown skin I appreciated what the police officer said and I thought he was quite honest about the abuse of the problems but I like the chief of police very much but I thought it was very courageous of you to call for his resignation and outraged that the autopsy was hidden and that those videos were hidden for a year I still would like to know what's going on with that thank you I believe that was for the city councillors if you have a view want to talk about that so as you probably know the city council is a special community composed of 15 people so I think the composition of that community is almost done and just yesterday the new North End report they called me unlike I think this is the right direction where we need to focus on what has passed happened, it's unfortunate but how do we make sure that this would never ever happen again the white kid brown kid and also tied to what happened to couple of kids around the past you know sometimes many people really react on things but the hardest of all of them is when we hide it we should be very transparent and bring issues no one will kill you because this is an issue let's discuss it let's solve it and to move forward and personally I did not vote for that committee because to me it's too much 15 people what can they get done in meetings around 1.5 hours but what I wanted is basically the police to do the work create a committee of 9 people and then bring them visa our policy can be what do you think we want to hear from but you cannot people who have families many people did apply but I think it should have done be different because the police are given the resources authority they have social workers smart and wonderful people anything we have is the problem they have to solve it first and then bring it to the community for their people I told Brian my first cousin that when this new camera I was pretty upset pretty pretty upset but you were here in front of me today people have to vote again I'm going to vote for you to come back to be our policy I was coming from a reactionary which is not good which we should not do but we need to continue and bring collaboration that we need to do learning is a great city we are not perfect, we are human but we need to solve our problems I would like to tell you that three of us in the house we have house bill H3 which is the ethnic studies bill and unanimously in the house and in the senate on roll call vote it was voted in first thing that we did March the law aims to identify structural racism reduce bias and build a culture of equity in Vermont schools by teaching students the history of all of us including ethnic and social groups that historically have been marginalized harassed, discriminated against or persecuted and there is a working group that will be reviewing Vermont's education standards and with the aim of reducing hatred and bias it will save for our community safer and it will prepare young people to work live, thrive in a world that is increasingly diverse house members have been doing it's already under question do you want to make a comment I actually do have a question and it is for our state legislators my understanding is that Vermont has pledged along with some other states to give our electoral vote to whoever the popular vote winner is and I presume that the Vermont state legislature has to do that and given that the electoral college was created by our founders specifically to avoid tyranny by things like popular vote I'm curious why the Vermont state legislature would consciously do something so unconstitutional oh curiously, constitution is a living document and one of the things we found was that the entire concept of the electoral college was based upon the agrarian versus they didn't want the tyranny of the large cities in the populace areas versus the agrarian ones and that's basically the origin of the outcome however the population is shifting the voting patterns are shifting and the country is substantially different in terms of how we are actually physically organized so within that construct what you're losing with the electoral college is one person one vote and it then becomes in my view it becomes a system where we further tamp down the interest in voting we have a country that under good if we get lucky 50% of our people vote during presidential election we're a country where we're spending millions of dollars on the one person's vote because not enough people vote if we had the kind of 70% turnout that candidate has on a regular basis I don't think we'd have this conversation but I think the electoral college tamps down the ability to vote and we need everyone to vote all the time every single time this is how this is what democracy looks like and that's the thing that's part 3 I have a follow up question about the electoral college if our representative representative districts in congress are assigned based on population within a certain percentage plus or minus percentage points based on the last census I don't see how the structure of the electoral college actually dampens voter the value of any individual vote to me voter apathy and lack of participation is a completely separate phenomenon and impact from what I think is being incorrectly blamed on the structure of the electoral college good point people are just recently said that politically gerrymandered districts are not their purview and they push that back down to everyone doing redistricting so again we also know and in a testimony both sides of the aisle there were two districts one for the democrats both of which were just appalling and they were all gerrymandered and so and we know that this is a political fact in the country so the piece is again it's my view whatever gives people the impression their vote doesn't count becomes an impediment in my mind so in my mind the argument that the electoral college is an impediment to the rest of the country so I'm willing to be part of that dialogue but again it's bias in my party personal opinion but again the thing that is so painful is people don't vote and in this city or mayoral I think what 30% of the population voted this is bad when you end up with spiky elections weird candidates who get small amounts of votes this is national and then you but isn't it true that nationally on the national vote sorry can we can we let her respond and then try to get some more questions from the rest of the thanks a lot of this a lot of this is based on I think it's our perception of what's going on and my photograph and my phone just get to say to our viewing public and to say that when we hear vote vote vote get everyone to know the vote this is how we overbid the democracy and this is how Ramada's state is wonderful and respond to the question I fully agree we need to get to a place where once again people think that their vote matters we had an election recently where the popular vote did not place an individual in office we now have strategies being developed where people are campaigning for winning the electoral college not winning the vote for the mayor and that's just not what it was designed to be and that's my question go ahead so I'm from Codeport TV and we are looking at community innovation proposal from the Burlington IT office where they had asked to rebuild the award voting map and part of that is because the award voting areas in the districts in the state don't line up such that it has some ridiculous number of different voting areas do you know that in cases where this actually caused people to not show up or they just didn't know what to do I guess Burlington the mayor thought this is thinking that this is a problem and I'm wondering what the reality is on the streets of people saying I don't know where to go it's so complicated in Burlington you look at the map that's available and I think it's an idea here's a good example we're divided pretty clearly as to where we go I think some places in the old north end or some when you get in to see council races you're divided differently but from a state position I think the city has decided pretty discreetly I don't think there's a lot of question on that that's where you vote for your state right one thing that's helped though is the same day registration one of the challenges I worked for for ten years back in the day and one of the problems was if someone moved and they moved in today we have people vote once every four years for instance sometimes you've got someone who's lived in the new north end for four years and they're still registered in I don't know Milton it's really great they'll go to the polling place where they think they should vote and they get to vote because I remember back in the day in the presidential we were sending people all over the city because we couldn't do anything about it we didn't even have traditional ballots so I think that is part of the difference it's voter apathy people do not understand how important it is to vote that's why I was so sorry to see that we left for a voting place so there's been no cases of new Americans having trouble finding this I'm going to keep the follow-ups for later I want to make sure we get questions from everyone first just a comment that debate was one of the most interesting I've heard in my years coming here I'd like to see you put on the agenda for next time with enough time so they could both speak thoroughly and educate us thank you both how about the electoral college electoral college we'll bring that to the next year I would like to just follow-up by saying I can't think of a better way for me to feel like my vote doesn't count than for the legislature to decide that the popular vote winner should get it rather than how voters in Vermont decide who they want to clarify your question are you referring to the legislature voting for the popular vote nationally or the popular vote within the state of Vermont? nationally so several states have pledged their electoral vote to whoever the popular vote winner is basically saying we don't care who the people in our state vote for we're going to give it to whoever the rest of the country decided was going to be our president and I find that very inappropriate it's unconstitutional do the state reps want to address the veracity of that I was just going to jump in and say I agree we should have this conversation and rather than getting into these right now but let's put this on the agenda for next Monday and really get to lay out what is the electoral college now what's going on nationally what role we play in the state of Vermont plays in that debate that's really worth the conversation and I think we should have it on the agenda but actually that question now it's going to get too far on the weeds and I think it's part of the conversation that needs to be longer and let's do that it's great those are the kind of urgent issues that the steering committee is eager to incorporate into our future agenda so thank you we'll take you up on that so let's stable that we have about 10 minutes left I know are there any other questions about new issues or should we go back to your follow up there can you clarify your question for me was that is there a problem with where you both depending on where you live in the community innovation proposal from the mayor's office the suggestion is that figuring out where you vote and I think especially for new Americans is confusing in the city because there's so many different potential places like different sides of the street that split up there's like tiny little areas that are like cut off from mother in it so I'm just curious about the reality of what the proposal is suggesting that it's how hard is it for I don't know maybe most people find it easy for maybe new Americans to know or maybe everybody's I don't know I do think I did find that some people who are on the bar and were surprised that they come back when they came to realize people have to you know go to St. Mark's but I actually my personal experience was that I felt like the signage could be better on voting against and maybe even a couple days before because you have a lot of people who want to vote didn't even realize it so like I always get the day off because I'm a state employee but I'm so grateful for that I think that's to me so I also think we should stress absentee ballots that's something that's like emerging because it's so much more convenient than it was just a few years ago I think that's the secret to getting the vote in order to turn out people engage people don't even know how easy it is to get an absentee ballot people don't realize how easy it is to go early I'd like to add to that it used to be you have the absentee to get an absentee ballot but now it's people call it absentee ballot or early voting but it's all early voting and you can vote right up into I think the sativated for the election you can vote at city hall right as soon as the bell has been printed right up through Saturday and if you need a sick ballot you can contact city hall and they'll have someone come to your home and help you vote at home so it's not necessary to go to the polls anymore and you don't have to be out of town to vote early yeah I mean you don't know if you live in Richmond you're always in old meetings it's amazing but one thing that I want to tell you is basically the new government we have one of the highest voted generals in the whole city and I think it's because all the candidates that run here they do a good job in order to remind people of elections coming in half the vote most of the time you leave absentee ballot but as for the new Americans not all of them are yet citizens even if they don't understand most of them are not citizens but the register voters are over 4,000 maybe in 4,000 but around 2,000 show up what if people in the 2,000 and I think that's a problem that's the question we need to ask to political parties because they collect data everybody where they live how old you are but do they actually really clean up their data some people died they moved away so we gather data we give it to them but afterwards we don't know what's going on but I think we also have the board the board of board administration I think that's what it's called committee or commission in the city I think this is a great question that we need to bring there there are other issues too but I'll add it thank you for your question one other thing so one word that is missing there the new Americans it's the new American community and one of the things that I was impressed with at the polls is that members of the community help each other complete that task and they're very excited to be participating in voting which is why the turn on was so enviable so we use that word conventionally because a lot of people who shouldn't be aren't so that community getting together and doing things is something we should try to handle all of them I'd love to hear any of the things that you're doing any ideas that anyone has about helping people who asked for an early ballot I've had people ask me for that and both for the primary and for the general election and then they don't return the ballot and I'm wondering because in some cases I have too much trouble speaking English to understand how to complete that ballot sorry we have two questions so I want to move on to those I work at the polls at Ward 7 and we have very few people in the whole day excuse me come in and are confused about where they should be and it turns out that when that does happen often it's because oh yeah I did move and you know oh I just moved down the other side of North Avenue or whatever but it's different so we just send them over to St. Mark's and it doesn't seem to be a problem and as far as new Americans who don't understand English we are allowed two people who are working the polls are allowed to go in the voting booth with that person and just tell them what it says and what we think it means and the two people that do go in the booth with that person are of different parties so we have to tell upfront what part of we are and then we go in the booth with a person and explain to them what we feel it means I don't see a problem with people getting lost and confused when they come to vote and also I kind of disagree with the absentee ballot idea voting is a social event and it really gets people out and it gets them talking you sit at your house and you check yes yes yes when really if you are out meeting the person standing out front or talking to your neighbor they may tell you something that you didn't know and you would change your mind and also people vote absentee ballot and then they come in to vote and they want their ballot and they want their ballot or they they forgot that they had their absentee ballot at home and now they want to vote and yeah it's just my comments maybe you were next meeting but there's no there's no uniform poster that the election board publishes with a space right with the location you know there were a poster that people got used to some red, white and blue banner and voting day and then roll in the bottom and if that was all over the city you'd be starting to look into more of the money input and another thing that could be done is have a free bus day to go to the polls and there's lots of things like that that can bring you down and making little numbers but I would have a poster so one last thing I was on the registration board for ten years and it's gotten, I disagree with the notion that it's confusing I mean I think your idea for a poster great but I just think it's gotten so much easier for people to vote and one of the things that people could be aware of is the envelope that you do get your accent to ballot in if you order one you know it's kind of hard to read and there's all this information so I've been working but there's a new redesign of that envelope so it's much clearer and there's twelve point type so it's bigger and it doesn't have all the little words that are totally unnecessary so that's going to make it easier but I just want to let people know that but you know I just wanted to also take the time to take to thank Ryan for the great facilitation I think we'll be there oh that is the end of our meeting thank you everyone for coming if you can help grab chairs and you know the details that I don't so are you going to put me on TV? yeah please are you on TV now? how do you stay at all? let's see if you do it yet are you the one? yeah let's try a bet I tried stream earlier yeah see if that's what happened to me